Industry News

Employees gain comfort with cloud use

As the use of cloud computing proliferates across the U.S., a variety of different workers are adopting the technology for their daily routine. The cloud is no longer the exclusive turf of IT managers and chief intelligence officers. Employees from a number of sectors have moved beyond the initial trepidations of the cloud and have begun to fully embrace it. As a result, productivity has increased and operations are more efficient and less expensive.

However, as more and more people become comfortable with the cloud and its many perks, such as data sharing and aggregation, the trend may eliminate the need for several types of common job titles.

Middle managers could soon become obsolete
The growth of cloud computing might soon shrink the size of departments from several kinds of companies, according to The New York Times. This could soon lessen and eventually end the role of middle managers.

Ed Lazowska, who holds a chair in computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, told the publication that technology like cloud computing molds the workplace. He believes that the cloud will lead to more outsourcing of work, collaboration and specialization. David Campbell, the head of engineering at Microsoft Azure, noted that the technological development has expedited business operations.

"Instead of having a debate informed by decades of experience around whether a customer would want A or B, we define a testable hypothesis, which we quickly try to validate," Campbell told The Times.

Research finds that companies don't need extra cloud help
A survey recently conducted by NuoDB provides compelling evidence that companies have faith in their employees to adopt cloud use on their own. Of the more than 200 respondents at the Cloud Expo and AWS re:invent conferences, 14 percent said that they have a specific cloud strategist to oversee the expansion of their cloud infrastructure.

The survey also noted that 60 percent of respondents said the cloud is one of their company's top three business or IT initiatives, but feel confident that their current IT team can handle the job. In other words, a cloud strategist may not be entirely necessary.

"You see a trend toward mobile centers of excellence, traditional IT emerge, rather than appointing somebody to be mobile, and having that somebody separate from your head of IT, your marketing officer and so on," Cathal McGloin, the CEO of FeedHenry, told the news source. "So now it's more part of the ordinary business rather than being a standalone."